The Prince of Death and the Tiger
by H. S. Hines
Summary: A fairy tale rendition of the life of the aristocratic assassin. Please R&R.


_Disclaimer: While I don't own the characters, I doubt their possessor would wish to claim my demented stories written in homage to her creations. Thus, their possession remains that of the reader. I enjoy no wealth beyond the words of reviews that I hope you bestow upon me. _

Code: Sesshomaru  
Rating: T  
Genre: Uh… drama?  
Feedback: Is the sweet nectar to feed my muse. So do please review.

_Notes: I wrote this because I was researching Japanese fairy tales for another story and this came to mind. The poem at the end is selected passages from a tribute song I wrote to all the beautiful, evil men of anime/manga and any dark, twisted fed up fangirl (or boy) who feels it. _

**The Prince of Death and the Tiger**

Once upon a time, there was a prince. He was known far and wide to be a heartless man. Men fell to their knees in fear at a simple glance. He hated everyone he met, finding them inferior. He even wished to kill those he loved. He fought his father, time and again, seeking to kill the man and gain his strength. His mother left in fear of him when he was very young, hating her husband for putting that look in her son's eyes. For even as a child, there was a cold look in his eyes that gave him his name. His father tried to raise him properly, but his heart changed as he grew old. Soon, the lessons he taught his son, he no longer believed.

The boy learned well, though. He learned not to love, not to care for anyone but himself. When his father fell in love and tried to teach him differently than he always had before, he fought him for the first time, seeing him grow weak. He wanted to defeat his father while he was still the most powerful man in the world. Alas, it was not to be his hand that slew the great man, but that of a dragon. The prince cursed the name of the dragon, cursed the second son that his father loved in his place. He had been the prize pupil, the best son. And his father left his legacy to the brat and hid him and his mother away from him.

His father did manage to plant a seed of doubt in him before his death. Centuries passed and the boy grew into a man. He knew no love, felt no mercy. He rewarded those who served him well and killed those that failed him. He didn't care one way or another about those not in his path. They could burn or prosper as they would and he ignored their prayers for him to save them. He sought the legacy his father had left, finding and losing it in the same day, along with his left arm. He tried again and failed again, to his humiliation.

A child found him and refused to fear him, trying in vain to serve him. He saw her every day and one day when she returned, she was injured. A strange feeling filled him and he asked her how the damage had happened. When she didn't respond, he forgave her, trying to dismiss the feeling. Then the girl was killed. The joy she had expressed at his simple notice of her wounds filled his mind and the blade at his side, always ignored, always hated, pulsed to life. He knew what it was for, and yet, he used it, holding the girl as the life returned to her body. He gasped at the feeling that coursed through his veins. It was relief.

He let the child follow him. He let her know that it was entirely her choice and that she owed him nothing. But still, she followed. She was of the race of insects that plagued him and birthed his brother, but he kept her as a pet. He told himself he didn't care about her, but his heart betrayed him, over and over. When a man who he wanted to kill for betraying him kidnapped her, he let him go to save her. He hated the man even more after that and devoted his life to hunting him and killing him. He was just a filthy hanyo, after all. Just like his brother.

The prince and his entourage traveled far and wide, spreading his name further and seeking to kill the hanyo. Things were happening to him and he was changing. His heart was driving him for the first time in his life. When he fought for yet another legacy from his father, he was asked to show his heart to save everyone. But he refused to speak it, even as he used the traitorous thing to save a world he hated.

He returned to his path, finding the way dark and unfitting for him. He stumbled in the dark, fighting the heart that had betrayed him. He longed to cut it out, but it kept him moving forward and he was trapped with it. An eternal battle that he refused to lose. So when she appeared in his path, human and weak, in the middle of the battle with his brother, he thought little of his sword piercing her heart. Until his delivered a bloody blow with the strange voice that was growing in his mind.

He conceded the battle, though not the war and pulled his other sword, reviving her. She showed no fear at first, even though his hand was the one that slew her. He wanted her afraid and she trembled before him. She spoke in strange words he barely understood and she was colored like a demon with pale hair and violet eyes. He left in frustration, not caring to hear the prophecy she spoke of his fall.

But he came across her again and she was transformed under the light of the full moon. He realized that she was a hanyo, like his brother and he hated her even more. Still, he had to admit that her indigo stripes complimented his own and her red eyes called to him as she took her youkai form. She fought him and he was shocked at the rage contained within her. It matched his own and he betrayed himself again when the fury pulled the tiger from within her to the outside. He had never seen a hanyo that could transform as he could. He took his canine form and battled her, overcoming her easily.

She was but a pale reflection of a taiyoukai and as he stood over her, his claws poised to melt her into nothing, he looked into her eyes. The tiger looked back, in her small hanyo form again with the morning light. He couldn't kill her. He fled from the day and tried to forget it and forget her. He failed over and over and soon, he tracked her scent. He was sure she hated him, but when he caught her and held her to the ground, she leaned forward to whisper in his ear.

"I love you," she whispered. He drew back from her, looking into her eyes. "I have from the first time I saw you. That is why I will not give you what you seek," she hissed, releasing her hanyo claws in his face and fled. He knelt in the field, bleeding and betrayed. The road he had traveled was gone completely, lost in the red and blue eyes of a tiger. No woman had ever denied his needs before and he tracked her down again. Again, she rebuffed him, offering him a bloodstained kiss before she ran from him.

It became all he thought of, taming the tiger and making her his. "You will be mine," he told her on one of the occasions that he caught her. She smiled at him and tasted his lips. He thought he had won and savored the moment until she pulled back.

"I already am," she said. "But you will never be mine. There is no place for me in your heart." With that, she sank a blade he hadn't even seen into his chest and escaped him again. His human girl found him and cared for him again. She asked him strange questions about her own death and he told her to stop being stupid. He didn't like the feeling that moved in his heart now. It was worse than when she had died. He hated his heart and ceased chasing the tiger, returning to conquest. For hundreds of years, that had been the course he had followed. Now it was all falling apart and he was lost. Where had it gone wrong? When had he become weak like his father? What dragon would slay him?

The hanyo of betrayal fought the tiger one day, spilling her blood and the prince followed the scent to him. They fought and the hanyo escaped, once again because of a spawn of the insect race of humans. The tiger lay dying in his arms and he stared into their human depths, curious as to why her form changed so much. It seemed that she held this one the longest and it was strange to him that she could be so weak and have so much power over him. She staved off death, time and again.

He tried to claim her, but she pushed him away, yet again. She didn't leave him unsatisfied, though. When she stood from the place she had brought him down to with her hands, he couldn't follow. She fled and he was too weak to follow. Soon he was chasing her again. The next time he caught her, she pulled off the same trick, only with her mouth. When she left again, he was determined that he would take her the next time he saw her and not let her get away.

He found her and they fought again. He brought her down within minutes and held her down beneath him, trying to remover her kimono. She began to weep and he stopped. "Why do you cry?" he asked.

"I will lose you tonight," she answered with a smile through her tears. "Once you take what you want, I will never see you again." He said nothing to her strange words, but laid her bare in the moonlight. "I want you," she whispered, "to give me one thing for this."

"What do you ask?" he responded, gazing on his victory.

"Since this will be the only time, I ask that you pretend to love me, as I love you. Don't mate me," she whispered, "Make love to me." He agreed easily and took what he had been chasing for so long, letting his heart out of the cage he had built around it. He believed he loved her that night and she believed it as well. When the sun came up, she was gone. He awoke to a foreign feeling. Love. He felt loved. He thought about it and realized that it was something he had never felt before in his life. Certainly, he had been loved, but he had never felt it before.

No trace of the tiger ever showed again. The prince grew to forget her eventually. But she had broken the cage and his heart began to slowly take him over. He didn't let it change him, though. He remained as ruthless and conquest-driven as ever. He ignored the men who walked free from the end of his sword as being beneath his notice whether they lived or died. He ignored his brother's possession of their father's legacy as no longer worth his time. He ignored the gifts he bestowed upon his human child as being a decent master. While he changed in so many ways that he refused to express, his name remained the same. They called him the Prince of Death. They called him Killing Perfection; the Death of Purity; the End of the Circle of Life. They called him Sesshomaru.

**_The End. _**

**_Demon _**

_(selective passages) _

_is it the claws dragged across skin?  
is it when your eyes glow crimson?  
__tell me why  
I would die  
to feel your teeth inside my flesh  
__be the demon in my dreams  
and fill the night with my screams  
__it's a dangerous obsession  
seeking to be your possession  
__to taste your blood warm on my lips  
to come to you while my soul rips  
__be the demon of my dreams  
let's fill the night with our screams_


End file.
